When you step out of the elevator on Level Four of the Denver Art Museum’s North Building over the next few weeks, you’ll see a colorful Quetzalcoatl flying above the lobby, letting loose two trails of Monarch butterflies into the pre-Columbian and Spanish Colonial galleries. They’re part of Las Almas…
At a fashion show, sometimes the style we spot off the runway deserves a second look. We spied event coordinator Rita Sater, a Denver native who has a background in visual merchandising, styling, design and makeup artistry, at the Fashion Group International and Jones New York fashion show at Dillard’s…
As we look to the future it’s important to remember the past — because that’s what this weekend is all about, with sci-fi roller-skating parties, retro toy shows and stories from the early days of the indie music movement. Keep reading for our ten favorite events around Denver this weekend,…
Arial StaxXx was born in a pair of heels, but the firecracker persona of 25-year-old Jonathon Torres didn’t make her debut as a drag star until the 2015 Ultimate Queen competition. That contest is known for testing the mettle of the most seasoned performers through fourteen weeks of makeup, dance…
The Denver arts community loves nothing more than seeing its native sons and daughters succeed in the wider world. This week presents yet another opportunity to catch a veteran Mile High comic crush on a nationally televised stage: Chris Charpentier will make his debut on Fuse TV’s Uproarious on October 21. Hosted by…
When I last saw Jada Suzanne Dixon, it was in White Guy on the Bus at Curious, and she was a single mother, a nursing student traveling by bus to visit her brother in prison, a poor and powerless woman who’s eventually confronted by a wrenching dilemma. Dixon couldn’t be…
This is a success story. This is Field of Dreams for book lovers. It’s the tale of two bibliophiles and their devotion to the intersection of the printed word and the land, a devotion that led to amassing an eclectic, comprehensive collection that starts with nature and man’s relation to…
Designer Katie Wells — aka Giddyup! — lives for Halloween, when she paints the runway with her signature bug-encrusted gowns and cobweb couture. Wells debuted her 2016 costume line on the sidewalk in front of the new Denver Fashion Truck brick-and-mortar boutique at 2343 West 44th Avenue on October 15, and photographer Ken Hamblin…
Conceptual art has a century-long history, dating back to Marcel Duchamp’s radical “Readymades” in the early 1900 s. By appropriating a snow shovel and then calling it a sculpture, for instance, Duchamp proved that artists had the sole authority to define what art was. From there, conceptual art grew to…
Andrew Novick collects things. Lots of things. But Novick is no garden-variety hoarder. Each of his prized objects, which are catalogued and line shelves in his garage, evoked some kind of story for him, and the collection, once the subject of a museum exhibit at Adam Lerner’s old Lab at…
In the nine years since she was first accused of and jailed for murder — then exculpated, only to be retried and found guilty again, and finally absolved — Amanda Knox has learned a thing or two about performance. “Either I’m a psychopath in sheep’s clothing…,” the 21st century’s most…
Words can’t do justice to the singular power of Keith Maitland’s documentary Tower, a you-are-there reconstruction of the harrowing 1966 mass shooting at the University of Texas at Austin, where 25-year-old former Marine and engineering student Charles Whitman planted himself in the school’s clock tower and shot 49 people, killing…
Christopher Guest’s films mostly deal with passionate but ordinary people who aspire to positions of status within strange little subcultures: mid-century folk music, dog shows, community theater or, in the case of his new mockumentary, Mascots, the world of sports-mascot competitions. In the alternate universe of Guest’s first film in…
Don’t ever make the mistake of dismissing James Ivory’s E.M. Forster adaptation Howards End as a mere “costume drama.” Yes, the characters wear corsets and evening suits and talk through manners and inheritance. But in its own way, Ivory’s film — which has been newly restored and is being re-released,…
The most destructive villain in this year’s summer movies isn’t some super-powered fiend. It’s us, the consumers of North America, whose desires shape the world. The U.S. looms over Jayro Bustamante’s patient, observant, exquisitely painful debut feature Ixcanul, just as it looms over the Guatemalan coffee plantation in which Bustamante’s…
Even those of us with a soft spot for dumb, high-concept Hollywood comedies might be outraged by the limp, unfunny nothingburger that is Keeping Up with the Joneses. A wan attempt to mix the comedy of domestic anxiety with the comedy of inept espionage — think Neighbors meets Central Intelligence…
Like the rambling fixer-upper at its heart, Merchant Ivory’s Howards End has aged quite well, and not just because of the brightened-up 4K restoration from Cohen Media Group. It’s brisk and funny, prim but open-minded, testy about pomposity even as it exemplifies what once was the most pompous of all…
When a quiet film is set outside of the big cities, it’s often called a “slice of life.” But that’s ultimately a condescending designation; to the millions of people residing on the prairies and in the small towns dotting the throughways, it is simply life, with a capital “L.” In…
Have there ever been entertainment-media product tie-ins like the Ouija movies? The shriekingly enjoyable Ouija: Origin of Evil, like its less successful 2014 predecessor Ouija, lays out as its best case that the toy it’s advertising will destroy your life, maybe kill your family and damn your very soul. 30…
One of the reasons why people in this post-post-modern world respond so passionately to outdoor artis its impermanence. It will not be there forever, reminding us of our own fleeting existence. And ‘Duct Work, a massive mural project just completed in the viaduct space under I-70 at 46th Avenue and…
Few comedians in Denver (or anywhere, for that matter) are as industrious and self-starting as Zac Maas. Whether toiling away at open mics, snatching up any emcee and feature spots that come along, doing improv, shooting sketches or co-hosting the Whiskey & Cigarettes podcast, Maas always seems to have several…
Denver’s fall arts season is in full swing, bringing ballet and fresh theater to Denver stages, along with a touch of the spooky. Take your pick from these three seasonally friendly diversions. Colorado Ballet, Swan Lake Ellie Caulkins Opera House 7:30 p.m. Thursday, October 20, through Saturday, October 22 2 p.m…
